As with most other boards in the market, the APC8750 hasn't been built with performance in mind. To keep costs down, VIA has opted for the WonderMedia Prizm WM8750 chip, an ARM11 processor very similar to the one used in the Raspberry Pi. Although its core clock speed is higher, the Pi boasts a more powerful graphics processor - and can also be overclocked to 900MHz and beyond without affecting the warranty thanks to a new 'Turbo Mode' sanctioned by its creators.

As with our testing of the Pi's performance, we turned to the open-source SysBench benchmark suite. At the same time, we installed the latest build of Raspbian. Designed for the Raspberry Pi, Raspbian is a Debian Linux derivative built specifically for ARM11 chips, and offers significantly improved performance over the stock Debian operating system we used for our original Raspberry Pi review. At the same time, we re-tested the Raspberry Pi using the same operating system - providing a level playing field for performance comparisons between the two.


The SysBench CPU test is purely synthetic: it calculates prime numbers up to a selected maximum using 64-bit integer mathematics. It's something that ARM11 chips, which have a 32-bit core and typically poor integer performance, struggle with, and a good indicator of a chip's overall performance.

What we didn't do was test performance under the stock Android operating system. As you'll see later, it's so painful as to be a reason not to buy the APC by itself. If you do pick one up, you'll be replacing it with Raspbian if only to save your own sanity.


The results are clear: if you're not interested in overclocking, then the APC8750's higher clockspeed is a clear winner. Even at matching clock speeds, the APC8750 manages to edge out the Raspberry Pi - although the difference is minuscule. It's only when overclocked to 900MHz - something that the Raspberry Pi's Turbo Mode allows easily, while the APC cannot do - that the Pi handily trounces the APC8750 in overall performance.